


into the woods

by newisalwaysbetter



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: ALL the rittenhouse for lucy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Caretaking, F/M, First Meeting, Protectiveness, giving her space, hiker flynn, mentions of blood and nudity, no rittenhouse for flynn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newisalwaysbetter/pseuds/newisalwaysbetter
Summary: There's a strange woman in the bushes. Flynn tries not to scare her away.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	into the woods

There is a woman in the bushes.

Garcia Flynn leans up against a tree, observing the dark, sharp eyes peering out at him from the undergrowth. He’s tried every language he knows, but apparently _Hello, can I help you?_ is not what she’s looking to hear. Flynn scrubs a hand over his mouth. 

He’d come out here precisely so he wouldn’t have company. Every person he saw had served as a brutal reminder that the only people _he_ cared about have vanished off the earth, but Lorena had loved the woods and he can almost sense her here, and he’d just been enjoying the silence and now there is a _woman_ in the _bushes_.

“Fine, then.” He should walk away and pretend he hasn’t seen her. “Don’t come out.” He should drag her to a hospital, but instead he sits down at the foot of the tree. “I’m just going to sit here and eat this delicious…” he checks the package. “Banana-nut protein bar.” Those dark eyes study him intently as Flynn opens the package. “Oh, you want some of this?” He breaks off a bite-size piece and wiggles it in front of him. He keeps his head bowed so he’s almost looking up at her, unthreatening. “Here,” Flynn says, and tosses the morsel in her direction, so it lands at the foot of her bush. “Go ahead.”

The woman watches him seriously, but Flynn ignores her, helping himself to his own protein bar and a drink of fresh water.

After a long moment, a pale, muddy hand slides out of the undergrowth to grab the piece of bar.

Flynn isn’t looking, but he can hear her chewing, and feel those sharp eyes boring a hole in his head.

“What, you want more? Suit yourself.” Flynn breaks off another piece of the bar he’s put aside for her and tosses it, this time aiming it so it lands a foot outside her bush. This time, he sees a hand with broken nails, and a wrist welted from being cuffed. Flynn swallows hard, the military part of his brain kicking into high gear.

He tries to hide that, however, so as not to scare her. Instead, he keeps tossing her bits of protein bar while he feigns disinterest, each time luring her a little further out of the greenery, each time seeing a little more of her. The bleeding wrist leads up a bare arm to a bare white shoulder, and Flynn swallows. 

“Greedy,” he says instead, when she scrambles out of the bush to eagerly grab the last bite. “What, you’ve never had an organic fruit bar before?”

Carefully, the woman creeps out of the bush entirely.

She’s small and starved and pale, and has clearly been running. Flynn can see all too much of her dirt-smeared body, from her bare, bleeding feet up to her dark, twig-filled hair. She’s clutching the rags of camo fatigues to her body to keep them from slipping off and revealing everything. Her eyes are alert, intelligent, and untrusting.

Flynn finishes off his own bar and stands, brushing the leaves from his pants. “I have a campsite about twenty minutes that way,” he says, pointing into the trees. “There are more of those protein bars there. And a warm fire, and water, if you want them. If you decide to join me, I won’t call the police. I won’t touch you. You just…look like you could use a hand. We have to take care of each other,” he finishes lamely.

The woman doesn’t move, just watches him uncertainly. Flynn isn’t fully sure she understands.

“But if you don’t want to, that’s fine.” Flynn sheds his zip-up hoodie and carefully bends down to set it on the ground between them. “I’ll just leave this for you, mm?” He adds another protein bar on top of it, and stands, casting her one last look before he goes. “If it gets dark, you can look for the smoke.”

It takes everything he has to leave her, but he imagines she’d get hurt if she tried to run.

It takes an hour for her to show up at his campsite.

Flynn spots her face peeking out from behind a tree, framed by the gray outline of the hood of his sweatshirt, but he studiously ignores her until she creeps out and closer to the fire. She’s wearing his sweatshirt. Flynn had known it’d be large on her, but it’s almost ridiculous: the hem hangs down past her hips, and her fingertips poke out of the long sleeves. He thinks she might have discarded her ragged clothes entirely.

As she approaches, Flynn wordlessly lays out a blanket next to the fire. When he moves away, the woman crouches down there, laying the blanket over her bare legs.

Flynn is careful to give her a wide berth as he adds a second helping to the dinner cooking over the fire. The woman doesn’t say a word, hardly even looks at him, and Flynn is grateful. He’s not well-equipped for conversation these days.

“Still hungry?” he asks, while taking dinner off the fire. The woman nods, and Flynn fetches her a fork. “Don’t eat too quickly; it’s hot.”

They sit in silence for a long time after they eat, enjoying the fire’s warmth and the quiet company. Eventually, she catches him watching her, and Flynn says gently, “I’d like to come over there and to check your wounds. Are you going to let me?” She looks down for a moment, considering. “You don’t have to.”

When she looks up at him, the woman’s dark eyes are full and sure. “Be careful,” she says softly.

His hands aren’t as soft as he’d like, but he tries. Flynn uses a bit of his water to wipe the dirt off her face and feet. Experience has made him carry enough medical supplies to stock a small bivouac, and for once he’s grateful. While he wipes down and bandages her bloody feet, Flynn carefully holds up each implement so that she can see and approve it.

She stiffens when he holds up the scissors, to cut the gauze. “ _No._ ”

That stops Flynn for a second, as he tries to decode the sudden panic behind her eyes. Eventually he decides it’s better not to ask. _Be careful,_ she’d told him.

Instead, he rips off the length of gauze with his teeth, and the woman seems to approve of that.

Afterwards, Flynn holds up his comb. (Of course he has a comb; being miles out from civilization is not excuse to go to seed.) The woman gives him a funny look, her nose crinkling, but after a moment turns her back to him, and the terrible trust there takes his breath away.

He’s so focused on brushing the tangles from her hair that he hardly hears when she asks, “What’s your name?”

“Flynn,” he says shortly. His first name was for Lorena alone.

“Thank you, Flynn,” she says softly.

After another long moment, he says awkwardly, “And what should I call you?”

She looks over her shoulder, avoiding his eyes. “My name is Lucy.”

Flynn doesn’t ask if it’s true. He knows.

He keeps brushing her hair long after it’s clean. The connection thrums through both of them. At some point he realizes she’s laid down, her head resting on his knee, not quite in his lap. Flynn realizes pleasantly, distantly, that they’re both warmed through, from the fire and from each other.

He’s been so lonely. He wonders if she has, too.

Flynn sets down the comb carefully, and tucks her blanket around her a little tighter. 

As he’s doing so, Lucy says bleakly, “Don’t call them while I’m sleeping.”

“Yes, I know.”

“The police, an ambulance, anyone. They can’t find me. I meant it–” her voice is rising slightly, and when Flynn slides a hand against her temple to soothe her, he finds it far too warm for the fire. _Feverish._

“Don’t let them find me,” Lucy repeats dizzily.

“Shh, shh, I understand. No police.” Flynn slides a hand under her head, lifting it so that he can put a pillow beneath. “We’ll figure out what to do in the morning, okay?” He lays down her head, hand sliding through her hair. Lucy hardly seems to notice.

Flynn is rising to stoke the fire when Lucy’s hand shoots out and fastens in the hem of his coat. “Don’t leave me?”

“Of course not.” Flynn sits back down beside her. Lucy’s got a death grip on his jacket, and he gently pries her fingers free. They immediately seize tight around his hand. Flynn chuckles softly and wraps her fingers in his, warming them. “Just you and me, all right?”

“Stay close to me,” she orders, as her eyes flutter shut.

“I will. Sleep now.” Flynn lifts her hand to brush her knuckles over her lips. His heart aches too much for further words. Then, because it’s the only thing he knows how to do, and because Flynn is apparently doomed to make every mistake more than once: “I’ll be here when you wake; I promise.”


End file.
